The most dangerous WiFi device: $22,000 sniper rifle that aims itself

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If there’s one thing that is comforting about the existence of sniper rifles that can pick off a target from a great distance away, it’s that a human has to operate it. A human, with all our flaws, all of our weaknesses, precise physical requirements, and questionable attention span, is the thing that has to point and shoot the gun. Humans aren’t perfect, which is a comforting thought when you find yourself being hunted by one, but what if the human that just thrust you into his own version of The Most Dangerous Game employed the help of a WiFi-enabled sniper rile that can aim itself and livestream the results?

Developed by Tracking Point, the gun can aim up to 1,200 yards away, which is more than half a mile away. The gun comes equipped with a laser range finder, wind speed sensors, ballistics computer, unit to measure inertia, a compass, and a networked tracking engine. Similarly to a standard gun, Tracking Point’s rifle is a simple point-and-click interface, except this gun doesn’t allow you to click unless you’re pointing the right way. That means you won’t miss your target, conveniently glancing off some nearby tin cans, alerting your victim to your presence. Instead, the gun will just shoot when it knows you’ll hit your mark.

The user just has to point the gun’s laser at the target, and it’ll shoot when the laser hits the mark.

The gun actually streams the action to an iPad Mini — which comes packaged with the gun — so, presumably, you can bring your kills into the digital age, and perhaps even get some Likes on Facebook.

TrackingPoint refers to the rifle as a PGF, a precision-guided firearm. Considering the gun won’t let you make a bad shot — which in turn provides something of a safe of trial-and-error method that amateurs could use — the rifle is password-protected in order to provide some amount of safety. The password doesn’t prevent the gun from shooting, so any trained marksman could still nail a distant deer, but the password would prevent an unskilled shooter from suddenly having a gun that can aim at you over a mile away.

The first batch of TrackingPoint’s PGFs were recently delivered to early-adopting customers, so you can now being living in fear that someone who can barely hold a gun can shoot the phone out of your hand from half a mile away.